Abstract

The windmill-like chiral nature of individual ZnPc molecules adsorbed on Cu(100) surface at room temperature has been revealed by scanning tunneling microscopy(STM) and the origin of such chirality is attributed to asymmetrical charge transfer between the molecules and the coppersurface. Such chiral enantiomers do recognize each other in molecular level and spontaneously form second-level chiral supramolecular structures with the same chirality during thermally driven movements. The interactions between the ZnPc molecules during such chiral recognition process have been discussed based on the analysis of the sub-molecule-resolution STM images.

Received 10 October 2011Accepted 31 January 2012Published online 21 February 2012

Acknowledgments:

This work was supported by the NSFC (Grant Nos. 10804041, 10979015, and 50976048). L. Wang acknowledges the financial support from the Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars, Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China and Jiangxi Provincial “Ganpo Talentes 555 Projects.” The authors thank Professor Xiaoming Liu for his fruitful discussions.